Nuance -- the company behind Siri's speech recognition -- has unveiled version 3 of its Dragon Dictate speech recognition software. The software will be available via Digital Download on September 13 with the physical box shipping on September 24.

Dragon Dictate 3 increases accuracy, speed, control of third-party applications, and support for transcription from digital voice recordings -- a feature that will be useful for many professions.

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Nuance Communications, Inc. today announced Dragon® Dictate for Mac 3, the most powerful, accurate and personalized voice recognition software for the Mac available on the market today. With increased accuracy and significant feature updates, Dragon Dictate lets people quickly and easily create and edit content, and command and control their favorite Mac applications by voice - anytime, anywhere.

Dragon Dictate harnesses the power of the renowned Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition technology to let Mac users simply speak to see their words instantly captured in real time on their screen. Dragon Dictate for Mac 3 is the most robust version of Dictate yet, with a 15 percent increase in accuracy, new Smart Format Rules and new correction capabilities for a personalized experience, wideband Bluetooth support, the ability to transcribe recorded audio files from a single speaker, and much more.

Dragon Dictate for Mac 3 is available for $199.99 as a digital download, a $199.99 physical box with a USB headset, or in several other configurations of varying prices.

I've been using version 2.0 (now updated to v2.5.2) for about a year now, and I was totally floored just now to learn that Nuance wants the full $150 upgrade price, even though I'd only be upgrading 1 step in the development!

Seems crazy that their upgrade price is so high! Especially if you consider they will likely want the same amount in coming years with future upgrades.

Further, they just told me that my version (2.5.2), is not supported by Mac OS Mountain Lion (I haven't upgraded yet, is this true?).

What a way to keep your customers happy, Nuance!

As for me, I'm abandoning ship, and won't be paying such high prices to upgrade. I'll use this version while I can, then I anticipate other, more open developers (e.g., Google) will have dictation solutions that will not only be more reasonably priced, but will likely work better as well.

I was a PC user until last summer when I switched back to Mac. On the PC, I used Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS) and loved it. Knowing that Nuance had Dragon Dictate for Mac helped me feel betters about the switch since I relied heavily on DNS for document creation. I felt better, that is, until I began using it. What a disappointment. Hard to use and sub-par performance compared to their PC product. I would never recommend it to anyone.

Just spend the $20 to upgrade to Mountain lion. And get dictation for free, which I understand is licensed from Nuance. You can only dictate two to three sentences at a time, but it works perfectly.

In fact, I dictated this whole post.

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Originally Posted by sandiegotim

I've been using version 2.0 (now updated to v2.5.2) for about a year now, and I was totally floored just now to learn that Nuance wants the full $150 upgrade price, even though I'd only be upgrading 1 step in the development!

Seems crazy that their upgrade price is so high! Especially if you consider they will likely want the same amount in coming years with future upgrades.

Further, they just told me that my version (2.5.2), is not supported by Mac OS Mountain Lion (I haven't upgraded yet, is this true?).

What a way to keep your customers happy, Nuance!

As for me, I'm abandoning ship, and won't be paying such high prices to upgrade. I'll use this version while I can, then I anticipate other, more open developers (e.g., Google) will have dictation solutions that will not only be more reasonably priced, but will likely work better as well.

I do wish Apple would buy these guys or create their own. Apple has proven that well integrated speech is valuable, but I really don't like having it uploaded to a foreign server for processing. I have to believe that even the iPhone has enough power to do it, but there's clearly no excuse on a desktop.

Dragon Systems is a sad tale. The founders of the company made the mistake of employing Goldman Sachs for advice on selling the company. In a nutshell, Dragon Systems and its shareholders lost everything, Goldman made millions in fees. Sound familiar? The brains behind Dragon dictation software are not employed with Nuance, a separate company that later bought Dragon at a bankruptcy auction.

From the link:
"Dragon Systems...was put up for sale at a bankruptcy auction. Visteon acquired some of Dragon’s technology. ScanSoft bought the bulk of it and went on to become a $7 billion giant, with a licensing deal with Apple. (The Bakers [developers of Dragon Systems] believe that some of their technology made its way into Siri.) ScanSoft later acquired — and assumed the name of — Nuance, another voice technology company."

Dragon Systems is a sad tale. The founders of the company made the mistake of employing Goldman Sachs for advice on selling the company. In a nutshell, Dragon Systems and its shareholders lost everything, Goldman made millions in fees. Sound familiar? The brains behind Dragon dictation software are not employed with Nuance, a separate company that later bought Dragon at a bankruptcy auction.

From the link:
"Dragon Systems...was put up for sale at a bankruptcy auction. Visteon acquired some of Dragon’s technology. ScanSoft bought the bulk of it and went on to become a $7 billion giant, with a licensing deal with Apple. (The Bakers [developers of Dragon Systems] believe that some of their technology made its way into Siri.) ScanSoft later acquired — and assumed the name of — Nuance, another voice technology company."

"You really think that just because you have an idea, it belongs to you?" - Obadiah Stane

So are there any real alternatives to Dragon Dictate? I am actually still using MacSpeech Dictate Medical because of the specific terminology I need to use; it would take an enormous effort to train the same vocabulary in Dragon Dictate 2.5 (and believe me, I tried: "C7-T1" always comes out as "Sea 7 T 1" no matter how many times I train it, and I have several hundred other words to also train).

For my uses, the included Dictation functions in Mountain Lion are just not sufficient.

Also, I find dictation pretty useless until it's able to translate while I'm speaking, similar to how Google does it.

That's exactly the point of buying Dragon Dictate. It is able to transcribe as you speak, without an internet connection. With ML's dictation, you have no idea what it is going to transcribe until you cancel the dictation. And it relies on an internet connection. If for some reason your connection drops out while using ML Dictation, everything you just said disappears into the ether.
If you plan on using dictation for school/business purposes, Dictation just isn't good enough. It only works for short things, like tweets, forum posts, etc.

Well it was good when it went on sale last year for the Christmas Season (at half price) and it is the last time i give money to then. The software is no good to me anymore it the treat upgrades this way!

Nuance just lost another loyal user. I've been a fan since the MacSpeech days.

Be warned, guys. This "New" version still limits your address book to 250 contacts. Any more than that and you can't use their email feature. Maybe they can fix that the NEXT time they charge 75% of full price for an small upgrade.

Hey I appreciate you sharing your experience. I was considering purchasing this based off using dragon naturally speaking on someone's PC, however after reading your post and a few other people's comments online with the exact same complaint I will not be purchasing it. Thank you for saving me the headache of having to deal with this thing. Some guy on another forum went as far as to say he was going to install it in parallels to use it there, I guess he uses it for work, which is why I was thinking about buying it, however it's not a necessity. Any other people with similar experiences, I would really appreciate your info. Thanks again.

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Originally Posted by Sihua

I was a PC user until last summer when I switched back to Mac. On the PC, I used Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS) and loved it. Knowing that Nuance had Dragon Dictate for Mac helped me feel betters about the switch since I relied heavily on DNS for document creation. I felt better, that is, until I began using it. What a disappointment. Hard to use and sub-par performance compared to their PC product. I would never recommend it to anyone.